He took one step toward the pit, and then another, moving carefully as he neared the slippery edge of the crater. Then he froze as a huge glass arm, its smooth surface bulging with crystalline tumors, reached up over the side of the pit and sank sharp, lethal claws into the hardened surface of the soil. Slowly, a face rose into view over the lip of the crater, and Allen knew suddenly that the guerrillas were the least of his problems.
The creature might have been humanoid once, but no longer. Now it writhed and bulged with nodules that swelled rapidly and fell off, forming crystalline snakes with razor-sharp spikes erupting from their sides and backs. They hit the ground and rapidly wriggled toward him. The creature looked up for just a moment, its eyes—if it could be said to have such things—locking with Allen’s briefly. He was unsure whether it even saw him. Then its grip on the soil slipped, and it plunged back into the pit. Allen winced at the sound it made when it hit bottom.
Hastily backing away, Allen leveled his rifle at the half dozen creatures coming at him. Their speed was astonishing. His Pitbull spat a heavy slug, and then he went to full automatic fire. One of the monstrosities exploded into a million pieces, drifting down around him like a jeweled rain. Allen backpedaled and kept firing at the other crystal snakes. He ejected an empty clip, rammed in a new one, and kept firing until the rifle barrel turned cherry red from the friction of the slugs ripping away at the creatures.
Allen blew apart his six attackers, but another one popped from a bulge in the ground at his feet just as he ejected an empty clip. With no time to reload, he swung the butt of his rifle in a short, vicious arc and knocked off the eyestalks growing from the center of its head. That killed the thing as surely as the slugs that had blown apart the others.
He took another step backward, caught his heel, and sat down heavily. If Allen thought he was sweating profusely before, now his body was almost washed away in the torrents pouring from his skin. His mouth was dry with fear, and his heart hammered until it felt like a grenade ready to explode.
“What are they?” cried Consuela.
“I have no idea,” Allen said, “but they aren’t very friendly.”
For a moment Consuela stared at him and then laughed and shook her head. “You are not like other men, Capitán Allen. Not at all.”
“Thanks. I think,” he said, wondering if she was mocking him. But that was crazy. Consuela was only a poor ignorant country girl who’d wandered out in the jungle.
She quickly helped him to his feet. He rammed in his last clip of ammunition and knew he couldn’t hope to fight these monstrosities, more of which were now wriggling and tunneling up from the bottom of the pit. Whatever was down there, it was a breeding ground for other hideous, dangerous things. He had to find out what they were if he was to have a hope of retrieving his prize.
“Help me get that one into my pack,” Allen said, indicating the monster whose eyestalks he had bashed off. He pulled off his backpack and saw that his water was nearly gone. Opening one empty plastic bottle, he handed it to Consuela and indicated that she should put the glassy creature into it.
“You do not do this yourself?” she asked, recoiling from the task.
“I’ll cover you,” he said, damp hands tight on the Pitbull.
Consuela shrugged, then used a small stick to maneuver the dead crystal thing into the empty water bottle. She handed it to Allen, who carefully screwed on the cap.
“What will you do with this?”
Allen had no idea, but someone back at San Cristóbal might. This was not the real menace; that still crunched and lurched at the bottom of the pit, sucking up energy from whatever had crashed there. To get to the energy source, Allen knew he had to destroy the quartz humanoid brute, and he lacked the firepower for that. He didn’t think anything short of a SPEAR missile could kill it—and, unfortunately, that meant he would have to talk Diego into authorizing the strike.
“I’m going to take it back to the post and examine it,” he said more confidently than he felt. “Thanks for helping me.”
“Oh, Capitán Allen, if I can ever help you at any other time, please do not hesitate to call on Consuela,” the girl said. She came closer and rested a hand on his vest.
“I won’t forget your service today,” he said, his mouth even drier than it had been a few seconds earlier.
“You are so good to me,” she said, standing on tiptoe and kissing him fleetingly on the cheek. He felt a kilo lighter as Consuela slipped into the thick green barrier of jungle surrounding the crater and disappeared.
Allen started to call after her to ask how he could find her and then bit his tongue. It would not pay to announce his presence in a jungle filled with guerrilla patrols.
Not to mention whatever it was he had killed and stuffed into the plastic bottle. With the keening sounds and radiance from the pit at his back, Alex Allen headed back for the garrison, victorious.
* * *
From the edge of the jungle, crouched behind the sheltering vegetation, the two Pharon watched him go.
“Why would you not allow me to kill them?” the Slayer asked, perplexed. “They would have made fitting additions to our crew.” He gestured behind him, where a number of natives stood—fresh wounds gaping from their torsos, heads caved in, limbs missing, but somehow horribly still upright. They staggered under the weight of the life packs strapped to their backs, the hoses containing the essence of their former comrades plunging into their chests.
“I wanted to see what they were capable of,” the priest replied dismissively. “One primitive more or less makes no difference, but now we have information. We know that the Shard survived”—one hand clenched convulsively on a scythe at his waist—“and we also know that the Vor-stuff has somehow changed it.”
“And now we can kill it,” the Slayer said eagerly, his battle claw tensing in anticipation.
“Not yet,” the priest said, glaring at the pit that held the prize he had chased for days. He longed to race over to the crater and claim it for his own, but the Shard’s terrible transformation made him wary. “Caution is needed. Take the slaves and begin the repairs to our ship while I ponder how best to retrieve the mote.”
“But the Shard—”
“Is no threat to us,” the priest interrupted. “It has enough to concern it for the moment.”
The Slayer reluctantly retreated into the jungle, herding ahead of it the shambling monstrosities that had once been José’s missing guerrillas. The priest watched them go, then turned his attention back to the desperate struggle taking place in the crater. He had learned his lesson in the earlier encounter with the Shard. This time he would wait, and watch, and learn. And at the end of the day, the power would be his.
* * *
On the other side of the clearing torn from the jungle, Consuela was testing her ankle in preparation for the long trek back to the guerrilla headquarters, unaware of how close had been her brush with death. All in all, she thought, the day had gone extremely well. She could have simply killed the Union man—could have snapped his neck before he even realized she was there. But by leading him to the crater, she had gained much valuable information about what the alien was capable of. The delay had been worth it—now she had a healed ankle, her thirst quenched, and much more data to bring to José. As for the gullible Union captain, she did not think he would be reporting back to his people anytime soon—if at all.
* * *
She headed deeper into the jungle, moving easily now. As she went, she casually dropped something shiny on the ground, where it disappeared into the undergrowth: Allen’s GPS.
10
* * *
José Villalobos found it hard to concentrate, even in the safety of his headquarters at Comitan. He stared out the window at the bustling, prosperous city, its bright lights holding the darkness of the night at bay. In all Chiapas no city held the Zapatista guerrillas in greater esteem. Union forces avoided the town, and in return, José kept order in the city. It was a peculiar sta
ndoff, but one that suited both sides. The Union would kill thousands of innocents if they tried to ferret out the guerrillas there, and José constantly reminded them of that. Guerrilla war was as much about propaganda as it was about killing—maybe even more.
But it would change soon, this standoff, once he seized the nuclear reactor at Revancha. If the source of power for the entire region came under Zapatista control, José could pick and choose which villages received electricity. His hold on the countryside would strengthen, even in the cities, where the Union currently held greater sway. He would become a force to be reckoned with—and the Union would be forced to deal with him. It was a blow with the potential to win the war in one stroke. Even if he failed to seize the CANDU reactor, he would disable it and blame the Union for the subsequent loss of power. Propaganda did not have to be true to be effective.
He needed to put some last-minute touches on the plan, but his mind kept drifting to Consuela and her mysterious disappearance after the Puerto Madero raid. Mary had reported that two patrols hunting for Consuela had also vanished without a trace, something that should be impossible in guerrilla-controlled territory. Worse, intelligence from the entire region had turned spotty. Without decent intel, how could he plan? How could he fight the Union’s superior weapons?
“You look like you need a friend,” said Flaco, coming into the room with two bottles under one pudgy arm. He dropped one on the maps and documents that littered the table and uncorked the other for his own sampling. “Tequila, José, fine tequila. Just what you need.”
José stared at the bottle for a moment before trying some. The bite was worse than he had anticipated. Vices required practice, and for this one he was out of shape.
“Good, eh?” Flaco worked on his own bottle with a vengeance. “I see you plan for Revancha. I have all the arms. Supplies, food, water, it is all ready. There is only one thing lacking.”
“What’s that?” José asked, startled. “We got everything we needed at Puerto Madero.”
“To pound some sanity into Gunther’s head. He trains his men like the Japanese. What were they called?”
“Kamikaze,” José said. “It’s true what you say. We don’t need suicides. We want victory and the guerrillas alive for the celebration afterward.”
“He is a strange one. I try to get him to relax, but he is so . . . so determined. Gunther is like a train that runs only on his own odd gauge of track.”
José nodded, smiling wanly. “I will redirect him.”
“You need Consuela. She is the only one who can convince him to do the proper thing—and sometimes even she does not succeed.” Flaco tipped his head to one side and peered at his leader. “Any word?”
José shook his head.
“A pity. She would get my vote for the Consulta any day.”
“I will hold you to that, Flaco,” Consuela said, coming into the office. “First, give me some of your tequila. I am thirsty and tired and need it!”
José heaved a huge sigh of relief on seeing her; he had feared she was lost permanently. He pushed his barely touched bottle across the desk to her.
“All yours—in exchange for a report. You had us worrying that you had gone over to the Union, seduced by their fine clothing and ample food,” he teased.
“Bah,” she said, taking a pull on the tequila. “Abandon good tequila for that? Ahhh!” Consuela put the bottle back on the desk, settled into a chair, and seemed to deflate. As worried as he had been, José had not realized until this moment how much he had feared losing her. Without her, he would have been like a man without eyes or ears. None of his soldiers produced more useful intelligence than Consuela.
“You have been hurt,” he noted, seeing the bruises and scratches that covered her skin. “You should rest. There will be time enough for you to make your report . . .”
“No!” The sudden flare in Consuela’s dark eyes told José he had misjudged the level of her exhaustion. “There is too much to tell. I should not have wasted time with this.” She waved dismissively at the bottle.
“Waste?” protested Flaco. “Never. Not good tequila!”
“What kept you so long, chica?” José asked gently.
Consuela took a deep breath, and José could see her mentally sorting through all she had to tell him. If nothing else, he wanted her report on how the Cyclops had fared against the Union forces. The Cyclops—and the demon weapon he had sent with it.
“There is so much, José,” she said wearily. “I made contact with a Union captain from San Cristóbal, a foolish man we might use later for information—assuming he survives. I took his GPS from him. Without that, he is either dead or lost in the jungle. But that is not the biggest thing.”
“The Cyclops,” José said, gently steering her toward the important details of her adventure.
“No, no, not that. The mutant obeyed commands, used the aerosol weapon, and destroyed an Ares suit with it. The metal on the assault suit was beginning to erode by the time I retreated. The Union soldiers destroyed the Cyclops, but not before it killed at least four of them. Perhaps more.”
“And this is not the big news?” asked José. “What could be better than that?”
“Not better, but bigger,” Consuela said. “I was stunned by the fall of a thing from the sky.”
“After the Puerto Madero raid, we were hit by a shock wave, also,” José confirmed. “I thought it was a Union weapon, but they never followed up.”
“I saw where it crashed. Where the monster crashed!”
“Monster?” José asked skeptically. Consuela had been through a lot in the past two days, but he placed tremendous faith in her abilities. What she told him, he believed. But monsters from the sky?
“Don’t say it like that, José,” she snapped. “I am no fool. I did not imagine it. There is a crater in the jungle, and in that crater is something . . . I do not even know how to describe it. It is like a creature made of glass.”
“Perhaps it is what has been killing our patrols,” Flaco suggested, half-joking. He raised his eyebrows when Consuela stared at him. “You had not heard? Two patrols hunting for you, Consuela, both vanished. Gossip in the villages says they were stolen away by a chupacabra.”
“A goat sucker?” José laughed. “That is a myth, a story to scare small children.”
Flaco shrugged eloquently and took another long drink of the potent tequila. “Something killed them. A small boy from a village near Teopisca, just south of San Cristóbal, claimed he saw a wild tall creature all in golden armor attack a patrol. Quickly following the attack came the chupacabra. It flickered in and out of sight and moved fast, very fast. And it wore a cleric’s chasuble, only it was metallic.”
“There is more, I suppose,” José said, amused at the tales spun by the campesinos. Only last month, he had been hearing reports of ghost demons stalking the countryside; now the long-mythical chupacabra was back. If Consuela told him she had seen a monster, he would—however reluctantly—believe her. But that did not mean he was forced to accept the locals’ stories as well. Two different monsters, both attacking at once? It defied belief.
“It wore a headdress, larger than any Mayan priest’s and with lenses and glass focusing devices,” Flaco said doggedly. “On the chupacabra’s back hung a large backpack with hoses coming from it and running to its chest and arms.”
“Quite an imagination, this muchacho,” José said. “Anything else?”
“He said it punctured its victim’s chest and drank his blood.”
“So young,” said José, “so young to sample tequila.” Flaco shrugged again as José turned to Consuela. “This was not your monster, was it?”
“No,” she said positively. “It was nothing like that. My monster is of crystal and changed form as I watched. It burrowed down to the thing that crashed and—”
He held up his hand. Even if what she was saying was true—and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was exaggerating slightly to convince him of the magnitude of the thr
eat—he could not deal with it now. The raid on Revancha needed all his care if he was to succeed, and he could not afford to divide his attention this close to the attack.
“Consuela, I promise you—as soon as we have seized power at the reactor, I will look into your report,” he said. “But for now, let us concentrate on the danger that we know.”
“With all respect, José, you are wrong,” she retorted. “This is a greater threat than the Union soldiers. If you had seen it . . .”
“After the raid,” José repeated firmly. Consuela opened her mouth to argue further, but then seemed to realize it was a hopeless battle.
“Find the curandero, chica,” José said gently. “He will tend your wounds and give you something to make you sleep.”
“But—”
“You will not miss the raid on Revancha. I promise. Now go,” he said, shooing her out.
When Consuela had gone—slowly, reluctantly—José turned angrily to Flaco. “She has been injured. Why should you taunt her with myths and legends?”
“I only tell you what I hear. It is nothing that is not being passed from lip to ear even now,” Flaco said.
“Bloodsuckers, monsters in golden armor, monsters of crystal. The real monsters are the Union soldiers! You, too—go, get your squad ready for Revancha. It will not be an easy fight.”
“You will use the Cyclops?” Flaco asked as he pushed himself to his feet, swaying slightly from the tequila.
“No,” José said. “Not at Revancha. We cannot risk having them turn on us at a critical moment.” As for the demon weapon, José did not want to use it at all, even if it could bring down an Ares. He wished he could leave the two remaining cylinders of the deadly green aerosol in their jungle hiding place forever. Some weapons were too dangerous to be used.
“Be careful, José,” said Flaco. “Be careful of not believing.”
José watched his trusted lieutenant disappear. For months he had concentrated all his hopes and attention on the Revancha attack. If he could cut off power to Union sympathizers, give electricity to those loyal to the Zapatistas, his movement could take control of all central Chiapas without having to fight the current war of attrition. If the Union tried to retake the CANDU nuclear reactor, they would pay a high price. Recruitment for the Mexican Contribution Forces fell off with every Union defeat, no matter how small.
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